


How Do I Love Thee

by bellepeppertronix



Category: Darkest Dungeon (Video Game)
Genre: Affection, Claville has The Most Feelings, Declarations Of Love, Dismas has a lot too and doesnt know how to parse them, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Smut, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-26
Updated: 2020-03-26
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:47:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23310367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellepeppertronix/pseuds/bellepeppertronix
Summary: A bit of fluff, for the Highwayman Dismas and his lover, the Leper Claville. If you want to get the complete nuance of their characters, please read What Happened to the Candlemaker's Apprentice first!~Once he'd gotten over the initial swearing and limping around, it was fine.Bastinian gave him a sidelong look and shook his head, and Bohun made an annoyed noise.“Quit trying to walk on it, before you make it worse,” Bohun groused.Dismas snorted a little. “'S a twisted ankle. Ain't as if it's broken or nothin',” he said. Then, defensively, “Doc G even said so!”“I said it was twisted, yes, but I most definitely didnotsay it was acceptable to hobble about upon it, putting further strain on already injured tissues!” she said.
Relationships: Highwayman/Leper (Darkest Dungeon)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 28
Collections: The Candlemaker's Apprentice (And Company)





	How Do I Love Thee

**Author's Note:**

> Ayyyy it is 3:18 in the morning here! Please enjoy this fic! I have not edited it yet, so any typos or weird formatting things are my fault, and will be fixed as soon as i am able!
> 
> Title is taken from Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnet 43.

Once he'd gotten over the initial swearing and limping around, it was fine.  
Sure, he couldn't put his full weight on it without feeling like his very thews would burst; and sure, he had to keep his knee at a precise angle to avoid hurting his foot further, but it was fine. Or, if it wasn't, it soon would be.

Bastinian gave him a sidelong look and shook his head, and Bohun made an annoyed noise.  
“Quit trying to walk on it, before you make it worse,” Bohun groused.  
Dismas snorted a little. “'S a twisted ankle. Ain't as if it's broken or nothin',” he said. Then, defensively, “Doc G even said so!”  
“I said it was twisted, yes, but I most definitely did NOT say it was acceptable to hobble about upon it, putting further strain on already injured tissues!” she said, seeming to materialize behind him. 

He did NOT yelp or startle when she did that, he was proud to think. And he only huffed at her a bit, rolling his eyes and holding out his hands in a placating gesture.  
“Doc, I wrenched me ankle before. Be fine in an hour or two, tops, no need to scold,” he said.

The thought that, after a successful mission in the Cove, where he had to dodge harpoons thrown by fish-men and wrestle with floating jellyfish demons, that a careless step over some uneven stones should be the injury he'd return to town with.  
The way walking on it made him screw up his face in pain was almost as embarrassing as the way he'd gotten the injury itself.  
He still felt like an ungrateful churl when he refused to accept Bastinian's offered arm, even as he knew he'd feel like a gangly, awkward kid if he'd allowed himself to sling his arm over the other man's shoulders and let him help.

~

Claville greeted them as they returned to the inn, standing a moment with his mouth a little open in surprise; then, before anyone could say anything, or Dismas could attempt to crack a joke and limp away, Claville had his arm over his shoulders and one of his own around Dismas's waist, and was carefully guiding him back to--  
\--to the cooking kitchens, where he deposited Dismas carefully in the chair by the hearth.

“'S just a sprain, Clav, nothin' serious,” he said.  
He didn't want to think too hard about why he felt nervous about this—why he did not want the other man to see him this way.  
And then he had to remid himseld that he'd seen Claville lain up in a hospital bed, sick as a dog and covered in open sores, and somehow Claville's pride had borne that. He wanted to think he was the sort of fellow whose pride could handle being helped after a twisted ankle. 

Claville huffed quietly. “You're hurt,” he said softly.  
“Yeah, but it—it ain't as bad as all that,” Dismas protested.  
In a back corner of his mind, he expected the other man to express his frustration at any moment—annoyance that Dismas had hurt himself, that he'd been careless, that he was going to slow them down. And then Dismas would make a joke and go sit in the dining hall by the fireplace with a book, and it would blow over. So long as he was allowed to lick his wounds in peace, he knew he'd be back up and around in a day or so—all that needed doing was to ask Doc G for a poultice, prop his foot on a chair, and forget about things for a bit. 

So he was, of course, surprised when Claville continued to hover, even after Dismas had got his boot off and his foot propped on the little beaten-up footstool they kept by the hearth.  
“I'll be back in a moment,” Claville said, and was gone.  
Dismas nodded, frowning as he leaned forward to rub—somewhat ineffectually—at his aching, throbbing ankle. Clenching his toes made a hot, dull ache spread all up the back of his leg, and his calf muscle twitched painfully when he did. He sat back gasping faintly in pain, and tried to will himself to think of other things. Maybe when Doc G came back by this way, he could ask her for some of that willow-bark powder, for the pain...

When Claville came back, he carried a little round wooden canister in one hand, and a bucket in the other.  
“Normally for a sprain, ice is best, but as there is none to be had, I brought the next best thing.” he set the bucket down before the stool with a soft thump; Dismas saw it was full of water, smelling faintly of wet stone: he'd gone to the well, rather than the kitchen pump, and likely drawn it himself.  
Dismas felt even more awkward than before.  
“Clav, really, you didn't have to go to so much trouble,” he said.

Claville said nothing, only pulled off his mask and set it aside. He handed Dismas the wooden canister, which Dismas turned over in his hands, before finding where the lid separated from the body. He carefully pulled the lid off, and the smell of grass washed up and over him immediately.  
“It was no trouble at all,” Claville said. Then, “Here, let me,” and suddenly he was kneeling, and his big hands were gently moving Dismas's foot, divesting him of his sock so carefully that it did not so much as jostle him.  
“It is quite swollen,” he murmured.  
“Doc G said the bone was sound,” Dismas said. He was staring at the way Claville's hands were so gentle on him, with something like surprise; and even Claville's overall calm demeanor was like a surprising balm he hadn't even known he could have. Hell, even when he'd run with the band, if a fellow was injured, the others would just get him a goodly amount of booze and maybe a bit of laudanum, if it was really bad, and leave him to sort himself out. Maybe, if they'd had the coin, a room in an inn somewhere, though half the time, the places they could afford had been little better than sleeping in the woods. 

Claville made a thoughtful noise, and then, with the same amount of care, rolled Dismas's trouser-leg up to just below his knee. The heat of his cupped palm around the meat of Dismas's calf was shockingly intimate, but not in a way that made his blood hot; his insides felt like melting butter, formless and oddly tender. He only flinched and hissed a little when Claville lowered his foot into the cold water. 

Then Claville straightened again, nodding at the canister. “Would you like some? For the pain,” he clarified.  
And who was Dismas to turn down free weed and company from a handsome man? He stuffed the strange anxiety down, even as he tried not to examine the melted-butter feeling too closely, either.

~

Dismas started awake to a soft grating sound the next morning, and sat up hastily. He was just in time to see Claville finish moving the wash-stand closer to the foot of the bed.  
“Clav?” he asked, his voice hoarse with sleep. He rubbed one bleary eye with the heel of his hand, and his heart leapt in his chest when Claville finished, brushed dust from his hands, and then wordlessly came and kissed him on the cheek.  
“Mornin' to you, too,” Dismas said, grinning.  
“I apologize; I did not mean to wake you.”  
“'S fine, Clav, really. You didn't need to do that.”  
Claville made a soft, unreadable sound, and said, “It will be easier for you to reach, now it is not all the way across the room.”  
There was a little cake of white soap to one side of the wash-basin, and for a split second he thought it'd be a shame to wash up with it, and rather wanted to nick later, for carving.  
It occurred to him that that was not the soap from the inn itself. 

It also occurred to him that Claville was putting a great deal more consideration into this than he'd expected. And a further unexpected occurrence, which dawned on his sleep-fuddled brain and would not be shaken aloose again, was that the buttery-warm feeling was deeply pleasant, almost as good as a hot bath and a hand-job. Desire for Claville to continue his little doting acts—and therefore give Dismas a little rush of that heretofore-unnamed wet, shivery, tender feeling—was fast winning out against any embarrassment he might have felt.

He did not have long to ponder on this, however; he returned Claville's peck on the cheek, they both wrinkled their noses at the other's breath, and laughed a moment.  
“I'll hold mine if you hold yours, if you want to keep goin',” Dismas said, and couldnt keep a straight face when Claville looked away, embarrassed. They both broke out into quiet laughter.  
“I think not. I hope you do not mind; the back of my own mouth tastes like something unmentionable, and I would not inflict that upon anyone whom I care for so deeply.”  
Dismas laughed on his own, then. “Aye, my mouth smells as if I were up all night gnawin' dead rats, too, don't worry yourself into your manners, Clav.”  
Dismas wondered at himself, having realized that he'd had to keep catching himself before calling Claville 'Clav, love', as if it was the most natural thing in the world. His lips tingled with the want to say it.

He tamped the desire down for the moment, however.  
Claville brought him the basin and a cup, and Dismas rinsed his mouth first, Claivlle following. After replacing the basin on the stand, Claville went to the foot of the bed and opened the heavy chest there. Dismas heard him ruste through its contents for a long while—long enough that he had time to stretch his arms and his back, and kicked his legs free of the covers.  
After soaking his ankle until the worst of the swelling had gone down, Claville had insisted on wrapping it for him, and now he regarded the tidy work, the thick linen bandages effectively holding it in place. The way Claville had wrapped it reminded him of the way some men wrapped the hilts of their swords, the bandages rising up his foot and around his ankle in a herring-bone pattern. He wondered how or why it was that Claville was such a dab hand at it, as he'd made quick work of it; but then he realized he had no idea how long Claville had been on his own, or the sorts of injuries he'd no doubt had to doctor himself through.  
Dismas felt oddly humbled, at that. He rather wanted to ask, and reminded him to do so later.

Then Claville stood from where he'd been rummaging in the chest at the foot of the bed, coming back up with a small brown glass flask that had the universal look of a bottle of medicine.  
“Find what you was lookin' for, then?” Dismas asked.  
Claville set the bottle on the wash-basin, frowning down at the still-open chest.  
“Not quite. A moment, my dear, and I will return.” he took the pitcher with him.

A not-inconsiderable thrill ran through Dismas, making him feel like he'd swallowed a live eel as his stomach fluttered. God damn, he felt like a young fool again, and was so far gone that he didn't mind it! To be called by a simple nickname ought not be enough to make him feel as gratified as he didn't.  
But, well. There it was. The thought persisted, side-by-side with the uncomfortable scrutiny.  
Dismas noticed the wash-stand had two goodly-sized sponges in a mesh bag, on a lower shelf; Claville had tossed a towel over the mirror, and kept a smaller stack of other white towels on the bottom shelf. There were also roughly a dozen bottles, all of different sizes and shapes, arranged on the middle shelf. He wondered what they were, and where Claville had gotten them from. 

That was as far as the thought extended; he was warm and comfortable and his ankle hurt only faintly now, so he saw no reason he shouldn't just get comfortable. He'd figure out how to get back downstairs to get breakfast later, he reasoned.  
He stretched again, pulling a flap of coverlet over himself, and settled back against the headboard and their piled pillows, and must have nodded off, because he startled awake a second time when he heard the door open again. 

“Did you fall asleep again?” Claville asked. His voice was full of a gentle laughter.  
Dismas had no idea what to do with the wash of tender feelings it sent over him.  
“Aye, I did,” he said. “The way you was gettin' thing set up, I thought for a minute I might wake up to you strippin' me down for a sponge-bath...”  
Claville hesitated at the side of the bed, all the lines of his body tightening with excitement for a moment that Dismas wold have missed, had he not been watching closely.  
“I would not be averse to the task, if you required it of me,” he said, very delicately. The elaborately casual way he spoke told Dismas he absolutely would have done it for him, without so much as hesitating, if he asked. Dismas felt more of the strangely tender feeling, strong enough that he had to look away. 

“I don't,” he mumbled. “It...it ain't that bad.” He wanted to say he'd been joking, but couldn't get the words out. He WANTED Claville to scrub his back for him. He wanted to help Claville untangle his hair, and wash it, and braid it up again. He wanted to wash the taller man's back, too.  
The realization came as a shock.  
“How is your ankle?” Claville murmured, drawing him back out of his spinning thoughts. 

“Stiff. Cold. Least now it doesn't feel like I've got hot iron pokers instead of ankle-bones,” Dismas joked. “Thanks again, for the cold water.”  
Claville hummed a little. “Of course, my dearest friend, you are always welcome. You really ought not put any weight upon that leg,” he said, musingly. And then, before Dismas could say anything else, he came around to the side of the bed, pulling the chair from the desk.  
“Come closer,” he said. “Let me see it.”  
He uncorked the small bottle and the sharp, medicinal smell of liniment seeped out.

Claville's hands, as they unwrapped the bandages, were sure and warm. And then, when he was rubbing the liniment into Dismas's skin—again with the sort of gentle care that new mothers usually reserved for newborns—Dismas felt like his whole body was melting, which made him feel a strange, almost illicit thrill. He wondered what Claville would have done if he'd actually broken his ankle; how much more attentive the care, and how much softer he'd treat him.  
The thought suddenly made Dismas's heart clench, and gave him more of the swallowed-butterflies feeling. 

“I hope I am not being too rough?” Claville asked quietly. Dismas's foot was in his lap, his heel on Claville's thigh, and at this point, Dismas realized belatedly that Claville was really just stroking his leg.  
“Not hardly,” Dismas said, with a little smile.  
Clavile huffed a soft chuckle through his nose, and for another few moments kept up the tender ministrations; then carefully he stood, slid the folded blanket off the chair's back and onto its seat, and propped Dismas's foot there, the blanket warmed by his back. 

“Where're you goin' now?” Dismas asked him, when he saw he was going back to the door. He tried not to sound completely plaintive, and knew he failed when Claville paused and half-turned around.  
“I will get us something to eat for breakfast. I promise I will be gone no longer than I must be,” he said.  
Dismas didnt know if he ought t take this to mean that Claville understood an outlaw's anxiety at not being able to get up and run, if he needed to, or if he was trying to placate a clingy lover. The one option was pity and the other...well, he didn't know. He hadn't very much experience in the romance department, having spent most of his years tumbling from one short fling into another, and almost always with fellows with whim anything long-term would have been impossiblee, anyway. 

He sat and stewed with the strange squirming tender feelings for awhile, the liniment making his foot tingle with chills one moment and then burning almost as if ant-bitten the next.  
He didn't want to get liniment on Claville's nice covers, and so had an awkward few moments shuffling blankets and sheets aside so he could stretch his leg against the mattress, and lean against the bed's headboard. 

But even by the time Claville returned, the feelings had not abated. Dismas felt equally anxious and eager, as the other man came over, and he saw that the tray was so laden with breakfast dainties that the plates were scarcely visible. 

They ate a breakfast of fried cornbread cakes, fried eggs, toast (which Claville had already spread with honey), and tea, and somehow or other ended up talking about mythology. In the middle of Claville telling him something about a god who the ancient peoples believed drew the sun across the sky in a golden chariot, Dismas took a bite of his toast, and felt some of the honey drip from it.

Dismas licked honey from the cup of his palm and grinned, without malice, at the way Claville's eyes tracked the movement of his tongue.  
Claville nudged him a little and they both blurted uncertain laughter. Dismas said, “Sorry, Clav, I was listenin', honest. Just didn't want to get anything sticky on the sheets.”  
Then Claville raised his eyebrows, one corner of his mouth quirking in amusement, and Dismas barked a laugh.  
“You know what I mean!” Dismas said. 

“Indeed,” Claville murmured, into the rim of his cup.  
There was something about the way he held it—two fingers through the handle, and the body cupped in his palm, that reminded Dismas more of a sailor than a prince.  
He nodded with his chin at Claville's hand, and asked, “So, I got a silly question for you, but as I am currently unable to grab my other means of entertainment--” here Claville stiffened, and looked over towards Dismas's battered trunk, pushed against the foot of the other bed, but Dismas only put his hand on Claville's knee and continued, “I figured I may as well pick your brain.”  
Claville smiled at him, and tilted his head. “I will answer whatever question you put to me, as far as I am able,” he said.

Dismas nodded, pinched together two toast crumbs on one corner of his plate for want of things to do with his hand—and of course he could not jog his leg—before he said, “Sometimes—some things you'll do with all the grace of any lord, and then other times, like now, it's...” he trailed off, realized he wasn't saying this well, and tried again. “Used to know this freebooter who held mugs that way,” he said. He nodded at Claville's hand.

The realization seemed to dawn on Claville, and he looked at his own hand, smiling again, this time wider.  
“Does no detail escape you?” he asked. He shifted closer in the bed, holding up the edge of the tray to stop their dishes sliding sideways. When he'd made himself comfortable again, he said, “Do you mean to ask why I do this, or about court manners, or something else?”  
Dismas paused, then shrugged one shoulder. “All, I s'pose.”

Claville chuckled. “Courtly manners matter little when one is in an encampment of soldiers. When I told you my love of books was an accidental side-effect of my illness, I was not exaggerating. The same may be said of some of the manners I learned—though of course there are certain matters of etiquette which I was taught, as a matter of course, much of it had more to do with chivalrous behavior on the battlefield than away from it.”  
Dismas snickered. “Aye, right. No kickin' in the stones, no throwin' sand in the other fellow's eyes...”  
Claville's startled laugh made Dismas smile so wide he felt like he should be hiding it.  
But Claville was idly drawing the corner of his last piece of toast through the little pool of honey left on his plate, and did not look back up at Dismas even as he spoke.  
“No one would do such a thing,” he said. “Not in the least for reasons that it would mark the assailant as a coward of the basest sort. There is also the issue of codpiece armor.”  
Dismas laughed. 

Then Claville did look back up at him, across the tray with their breakfast half-eaten upon it. In the morning sunlight, Claville's angular face and the shroud and neck-wrappings he still wore, gave him the quiet appearance of the statue of a saint.  
Dismas felt almost afraid to touch him, and equally afraid to ask to be touched, in turn.  
Claville was the one who reached out, slowly as if he worried Dismas would shy away; and then, when Dismas leaned in and rubbed the side of his cheek down and into the warm, waiting cup of Claville's palm, he was the one who leaned across and kissed him.

Later, when they'd finished eating, Dismas limped over to the wash-stand, where the water was no longer scalding, and Claville pulled the chair closer for him to rest his injured knee, despite his (mild, half-hearted) protests, and Claville sat and pretended to read a book while Dismas stripped down to his smallclothes and scrubbed himself clean.  
Twice, while he was shaving, he glanced over at Claville, and both times he had a split-second glimpse of the other man, watching him with something like hunger; he felt his own skin heat, and finished washing in a hurry.

“Left you plenty of water,” he said, as he settled on the bed beside Claville, his knee bumping into the other man's.  
Claville made a quiet noise. “There was no need to rush,” he said.  
Dismas snorted a laugh. “'F you wanted to see me in my smalls, you have only to ask,” Dismas said, smirking. He leaned back on his elbows, affecting a careless, loose posture, and did not even attempt to disguise from himself the warm lick of pleasure that curled in his belly, when Claville's eyes made a slow trip down his naked torso and back up.  
Dismas had a split-second realization that they had never actually gotten completey undressed around one another; that while he sometimes changed into a pair of loose sleeping breeches, he was rarely ever so bare.  
Now, with the cool air of Claville's room just beginning to make his skin prickle up into gooseflesh, he found the intimacy startled him.  
Not without further shock, he realized how careless he was being—his guns in their brace slung over the bedpost by his pillow, his trousers tossed over the foot of the bed, out of easy reach. If Claville had intended to do him harm--  
He had to stop the thought there, confused by its suddenness. His mind was running in a dozen directions at once--

Claville said nothing, only raised one hand and gently settled it low on Dismas's belly, where the hook-shaped scar curled up and towards his hipbone, the flesh raised into a ropy ridge of scar.  
The excitement flooded hot into Dismas's blood, then, as Claville moved his hand slightly, his thumb tracing the path of the scar.  
“Y'like scars? I've got loads, though none maybe as dramatic,” he said, still smiling crookedly. “Want to see?”  
“You are hurt,” Claville said gently.  
His warm hand, now idly stroking Dismas's belly, was making him tense slightly, harder and harder with every motion, as he kept anticiparing Claville would eventually move his hand down, slide his fingertips beneath the waistband of his sleeping breeches, wrap his hand around the half-chub Dismas was rapidly growing.  
“Aye, so I am,” he agreed, wetting his lips. “But I got a sprained ankle. The rest of me is in fine working order, you'll find.”  
He glanced between his crotch and Claville's face, smirking, and was surprised when Claville did no more than huff a single laugh and lean forward, pressing a kiss to his cheek nd then to his shoulder, before pulling away. 

Dismas wondered what he'd said wrong, and his surprise must have shwn on his face; Claville said, very gently, “I would not ask anything of that sort of you, while you are injured.”  
And then Dismas realized that Claville was treating him delicately again—and again, in a way he never would have anticipated—and he felt like an idiot and a churl for trying to pull his dick out at the first sign of closeness.  
“But,” Claville said, “If you would desire it, and it would not hurt you...” and he danced his fingers down over Dismas's belly, and his lips were on Dismas's neck, and Dismas reached up one hand and pulled at Claville's shroud until it came askew, and he sank his fingers into the other man's hair and held him closer. 

Afterwards, when Dismas lay pleasantly overheated and spent, and rolled over to watch with interest as Claville took himself in hand.  
The other man's eyes roamed everywhere but never settled upon his face, and when the rhythm of his arm slowed down, Dismas rolled comfortably onto his side and pulled himself closer.  
“D'you mind if I have a taste?” he asked, and his guts clenched hard in excitement when he saw Claville's cock twitch.  
“If—if you would like to,” Claville murmured. His voice was hoarse, and now that he was closer, Dismas could see the way his thighs and belly trembled faintly. “Let me wash,” Claville said, finally, and Dismas took his hand off his thigh and let him go.

It was Dismas's turn to stare; unlike Claville, however, he had no compulsions at all against being obvious, and lay there like a tomcat sunning himself, with his breeches still open and his soft cock barely tucked back inside.  
Claville was built like one of those marble statues the nobs liked to scatter around their properties—beautifully proportioned, a kind of fine-rounded musculature that he carried splendidly.  
He also had more scars than Dismas would have guessed—and not only from healed lesions. There was the healed gash in his back, low on his ribcage, the scar pale and sunken with age. There were others, chiefly up and down his arms, as anyone who fought with blades would have, and Dismas watched the muscle shift and bunch beneath his skin and wondered how it would feel against his lips.  
The musculature of his back was magnificent.

Claville glanced up at him once and his gaze skated away, fell upon his feet, and after a moment finally raised again to Dismas's face: uncertainty, yes, but also resignation, as if to say, 'Here I am, take me or leave me'.  
Dismas could not imagine being dissatistfid about any feature the man had, and decided it was time he said so.  
“There's a statue in the square of the capital, the next country over, that looks like you,” he said. “So well-buillt he steals your breath a bit each time you see him. Used to make the town's matrons and maidens alike act like a bunch of she-goats smellin' a billy.” Dismas paused. “Some of the young men, too, though the claim was always that we were goin' to admire his, er, sword.”  
Claville chuckled a little, but did not meet Dismas's eyes. “I am flattered to hear you still think me attractive enough that I could turn heads with desire rather than disgust.”

“Aw, Clav, c'mon now. Anyone lookin' at you—really lookin', not just a quick half-assed onece-over—could see you--” but he couldn't think of the words to say aloud that Claville was—beautiful, in a striking, ruined classical sense. He had the sort of figure you saw on the crumbled false ruins that nobs liked to scatter on their hoarded lands. There, as if left as the only reminders of an earlier time, where masculinity and beauty were not seen as being each other' antipodes. He'd once nearly been caught poaching on the land of a wealthy family, and had hid overnight in a marble pavilion, his only company being the ghostly-pale marble figures, in relief upon the walls, of several young men and women, their cavorting captured for near-eternity in pale, glistening stone.  
Dismas settled on, “Anyone payin' attention would see you're a handsome fellow.”  
Then finally Claville did look at him, with a rueful little smile on his face. “I am pleased you find me so.”  
Dismas felt the desire to change the subject to happie things like a physical ache—anything to remove the sadness that had suddenly stolen over Claville—but he had no time, before Claville sighed and with an obvious effort said, “I must apologize. You are the injured party here, and I am...not behaving as a gentleman.”

Dismas blinked a few times.  
“Did you not want to--” he said, then sat upright hastily. His gut tensed up into knots of anxiety. Fucking hell, he'd been an ass, pressing Claville for favors like the worst kind of selfish churl, and now he was not even certain what he would have to do to apologize.  
But Claville looked over at him with eyes that were, for a moment, wide; and then he shook his head. “I—no, that is not what I meant. I meant to say, I enjoy seeing your pleasure, and being the cause of it is...deeply gratifying. And i--” he paused. “I am not saying this well. That is to say, I mean that it has been a...a very long while since I have been on the receiving end of such—enjoyable attentions. And I find I do not know what to do with myself, sometimes, when they come. Yet—nor do I wish you to feel imposed-upon by my desire of you—of your company.” 

There were several things Dismas wanted to say all at once, and he felt proud of himself for not blurting out the first words that hit the back of his tongue.  
“Impose on me, Clav, please,” Dismas said. His voice was quiet.  
Claville splashed water over his face and stood a moment over the basin, his hands gripping either side of the wash-stand, and Dismas began to fear that somewhere along that line he had said entirely the wrong thing, and Claville would change the subject, and things would be left sour and awkward between them afterwards.  
Claville came back to the bed, finally, smelling now of soap and warm skin, and Dismas reached up to smooth down the damp curlicues of hair at one of his temples without thinking.  
Claville drew in a deep breath through his nose, his eyes sliding shut, and he wrapped his arms around Dismas and dropped his forehead onto Dismas's shoulder. 

“I do not mean only sexual pleasures,” Claville murmured, into the collar of Dismas's shirt.  
And it occurred to Dismas, not for the first time, that Claville likely had not been touched—gently, or at all, outside of physicians' examinations—in years.  
The thought made something twist up inside his chest.  
And he had continued to try to thrust his cock into the situation. 

“I do not wish to smother you,” Claville continued. “Every day I think I will wake and this will have been a dream, too bittersweet and perfect for the likes of me. Other days I wake and wonder if I am not still in the Sanitarium, if this is not all some happy hallucination brought on by the doctors' medicines. And now I have the pleasure of you needing me, and it makes me giddy, that I can at last provide you with even a fraction of the companionship and kindness you have afforded me.”

Dismas blinked a few times, one hand coming up to stroke the back of Claville's head.  
“But why would that be imposing?” Dismas finally asked.  
Claville pulled away slightly, and Dismas was again worried to see that his eyes and nose were slighty red. His soft voice was rough at its edges as raveled silk.  
“If I told you I would be content to lie beside you, chastely, and hold you, and...” Claville paused, and drew a breath as if for strength, before plunging on, “And simply--”  
“Clav, I'm sorry, I am, I didn't know. I didn't mean to--”  
Claville shook his head, his face equally confused and saddened. “If you wanted to have me, right now, I would not turn you down.”  
There it was—or, at least, Dismas thought he'd worked the pattern out. He felt his brows drawing together in worry that something else may have been going unspoken, like a deep, fast current passing beneath a bridge, still only on its surface.  
He wet his lips, and said, “I don't want to, unless you want to. And I ain't—i ain't going to tire of you, if you ain't in the mood. Please, tell me,” he said, actually plaintive this time. “What can I do to—to make this right?”

He wanted to say, I'll not lay a finger on you ever again, unless you ask; i'll sleep in a different bed, if it would lift this sadness from you.  
Instead, he made himself wait for Claville's answer, hardly daring to breathe.  
And then Claville's eyes filled with tears.  
Dismas grabbed his nightshirt one-handed and wadded it clumsily, despaired for a moment at the awkward shape and size, and then shook it loose to grab only one fold of the cloth. But when he went to hand it to Claville, for his face, Claville caught his wrist in a gentle grip, and he shook his head as he looked Dismas in the face.  
“I love you, and I would freely give of my body, for you, if you will have me.”

Dismas couldn't breathe, he was so stunned. But before Claville could draw the wrong conclusion from his silence, Dismas reached out and put his hands on Claville's face, realizing only then that he was probably mirroring the other man's dejected expression.  
“I love you, too,” he said. Smother me, he wanted to say. Whatever affection you are afraid to hold back—But he said, “You—you don't have to—to prove how you feel for me.”  
Claville bit his lip and covered his mouth with his hand, and slowly, slowly pulled Dismas into an enveloping embrace. Dismas wrapped his around around and held on, and felt the rumble of the other man's voice in his own ribs when he spoke next.  
“I can think of no better way to demonstrate the depths of my feeling for you.”

Dismas murmured, “This ain't entirely about the sex, is it?”  
Claville made a negative sound. “Being intimate with you—and your obvious and clear desire for me—is certainly a powerful tonic against some of my worse misgivings, I must confess. First I had feared, and then gradually grew resigned to, the knowledge that I would never again feel the touch of another, either platoniclly or sensually, and was even inuring myself to the concept of never again hearing a friendly word spoken that was not done in pity. And this was a simple reality of my existence, for years. And then I met you.”  
“It's rotten that things was so tough for you,” Dismas murmured, after a moment.  
Claville heaved a sigh. “And now I have a new lease on life. And now I have someone I wish to share it with.”  
he reached out and took Dismas's hand, and squeezed it gently. 

“Let me love you,” Claville continued. “Let me show you how I wish to do it.”  
So Dismas tamped down the guility feelings and instead let himself feel that bloom of almost embarrassing tenderness; let Claville help him up and down the stairs, and bring him his food, and rub liniment into his ankle, and a hundred other small things that, while he was still perfectly able to do them, would have been either uncomfortable or a hassle.  
He'd never felt so pampered before in his life. 

Only, he could think of no way to TELL Claville, without sounding either foolish or awkward.  
He endured Osmond's gentle ribbing, and Bohun's pointed looks. Bastinian, however, seemed to understand implicitly, and on one day when Dismas was sitting in an armchair by one of the windows, with his leg stretched before him on a threadbare ottoman, Claville brought them both cups of tea and wordlessly took Dismas's to refill it, before he even had time to ask.  
Bastinian caught Dismas's eye across the room; he looked between the two of them and a kind of bittersweet expression crossed his face.  
Then he nodded once, as if in approval, and Dismas looked away with his face burning.  
He could't think why, but he felt like a kid who'd been caught stealing candy, or exchanging handfuls of wildflowers with another boy behind the schoolhouse. 

Two more days passed in this manner, until his leg could bear his weight without him flinching in pain. Claville liked to hold him close at night, and Dismas abandoned wearing a shirt around the same time he did, so sometimes they would wake with their skin faintly dewy with their own and each other's sweat. 

The morning of the third day, when Claville went down to get their breakfast, Dismas took Claville's pillow and pressed his face into it, breathing the smell of Claville's skin and the hair oil he used, the herbal, almost fir-tree smell of him—balsam and rosemary and cold petrichor.  
Claville returned with the food and found Dismas petting at his morning half-mast through his pants, the pillow still in his arms.  
Finally Dismas rasped, “I got a confession to make.”  
Claville came closer and set the food down on the desk. Dismas, feeling more than a little guilty that the other man's affection had such a pronounced effect upon him, drew a deep breath before speaking again.  
“I—this whole time, i've been enjoyin' it. --You dotin' on me, I mean. I just—i ain't used to it. I didn't mean to come across as an ungrateful churl. i can't help myself, I see you comin', empty-handed or otherwise, an' I just feel like fireworks. 'He's here for ME!' I think. That you'd devote so much time to runnin' around helpin' me, when really if I had to, I could get along fine...”  
“But you would be uncomfortable,” Claville murmured gently. “I wish to spare you any discomfort I am able to.”

Dismas had a smart remark about not being accustomed to being waited upon hand and foot, but he was beginning to have the distinct impression that this was not that.  
So instead, he said, “Clav, love, you've made havin' a twisted ankle into a most pleasurable experience. And...i would not consider it smotherin', if you was to...if you wanted to continue later, when I was on the mend.”  
Claville's smile then was real, and warm, and when he kissed Dismas, another part of the pattern emerged.

“In truth, I have...always rather wondered at the novelty, of having someone to...dote upon, as you said,” Claville said, and Dismas was equally charmed and amused that he sounded almost shy.  
“Ah, that's true, ain't it? You was always the one getting' fussed over, so you never got to do it to anyone else,” Dismas said. He smiled, a little lopsidedly, in gentle amusement.  
Claville huffed a little laugh. “Yes, well, there is something to be said for the intimacy of...of caring for your lover, yourself. Somethng that was always much farther-removed, when I lived in the palaces. Before, due to several complicated rules of etiquette, I shold have been strictly forbidden from helping you up or down the stairs; and me bringing you breakfast would have been an unthinkable breach of protocol.”  
“And yet you ain't livin' in the palace anymore,” Dismas murmured. “An' you ain't bound by such laws anymore. And yet I thank you every day for breakin' 'em for me, just the same.  
Claville's smile told Dismas that this time, he'd hit the target dead-on.  
He loved Claville so much it hurt, and when he said so, Claville drew him in closer, and kissed him again, and again.

**Author's Note:**

> Oh man I spent like 3 days trying to write something short and fluffy to give myself a break from my main story.  
> And the whole time Claville kept trying his damndest to nose-dive into his feelings, while also wanting to aggressively cuddle Dismas like a teddy bear with knives hidden in his clothes...kind of the way you cuddle a cat, who will stiffen up in your arms, but then meow at you in annoyance when you try to put them down. He wants to be loved but can't bring himself to ask, or even say so. He is Shy, when it comes to his real feelings.
> 
> And Claville spent years thinking he was a disfigured wretch who would die alone, and now here's this handsome charismatic thief who flirts with him and brings him flowers, and writes stories for him? He is Very Emotionally Compromised, okay?


End file.
